Prior attempts to resolve solid waste disposal problems have been unsatisfactory for the most part. There remains a need for an acceptable alternate method and it remains long overdue. Insufficient consideration has thus far been placed on long range planning. The amount of solid waste is increasing every year and, unless a solution to its disposal in an environmentally acceptable manner is found and utilized. This problem and its dangers will continue to increase. The present methods of disposal, mostly by the use of landfills, are unsanitary, unsafe, unsightly, destructive, and polluting to the air, land, and water. Attempts to obtain new landfill permits have led to law suits, unhappy citizens, and unsightly landscapes.
There has been considerable work in the field of on-land waste recovery systems. This provides a small improvement but air pollution remains a problem and a landfill is still needed to dispose of the ash and residue from these processes.
This invention pertains to certain improvements in an apparatus for the safe and sanitary disposal of solid and wet solid waste. This invention relates to a self-propelled floating vessel which has certain novel and useful features relating to the use of the self-propelled vessel to on-load, carry, incinerate, and dispose of commercial and municipal solid and wet solid combustible waste. More particularly, this invention pertains to a ship adapted by the apparatus of the present invention to be useful for the thermal decontamination and reduction of contaminated, combustible, solid, and wet-solid waste. One specific and particularly valuable use of the apparatus of this invention is the decontamination and reduction of contaminated medical waste.
The prior art has addressed the problem of the reduction and disposal of solid waste.
Felton, in U.S. Pat. No. 2,046,112, provides a ship with one or more incineration units mounted therewithin stoked from without and heated to initiate and possibly maintain incineration. The incineration units were fed by individual hoppers from the top. Grates were solid and normally closed. The incineration units were emptied into buggies which were manually wheeled to a lifting device to discharge off the outboard of the ship. There was no provision for the disposal of liquids normally found with wet-solid waste. The patent taught that solid or liquid fuel bunkers were disposed within the ship with incineration being initiated through stoking openings in the incinerating units. The feeding hoppers, one per incineration unit, were sloped inwardly to the incinerating units to facilitate feeding of refuse to the incinerator.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,442,686, Guerchoux, provides a barge with an incinerator mounted on the deck which is fed from a tender ship through a novel chute device.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,552,082, Grey, provides an ocean-going ship with an incinerator mounted thereupon for the disposal of combustible liquids and pumpable slurries and sledges. The incinerator taught by the Grey patent is of the horizontal, liquid-burning type with the waste gasses emerging horizontally. The holding tanks are located above deck. The liquid from the holding tanks is fed by gravity to sumps located below deck and then pumped into the horizontal incinerators.